Caltech issued letters of highest level disciplinary reprimand to five JPL employees because they used JPL’s internal email system to discuss the implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling on the working conditions at JPL.

Friday Feedback: This week, go99ers comments on Ellen Brown’s analysis of another shady Wall Street practice: interest rate swaps: “This past week, ex- employee of the month Greg Smith said that Goldman-Sachs referred to our local bureaucrats and the gullible suckers at the raw end of a swindle as “muppets.” So according to them, WE are all muppets, suckers to be swindled. WOW!!!!”

Sharon Kyle: In a relatively short period of time, our nation has incarcerated enough people to create the second largest city in the United States. Releasing a few tens of thousand prisoners for overcrowding won’t change much or will it?

Sylvia Moore: Aside from the Republicans, the corporate media were big winners in this year’s turbulent mid-terms. This election was the most expensive non-presidential election in history, with $4 billion spent by candidates.

Diane Lefer: Though the Supreme Court ruled on May 17 in Graham v. Florida that juveniles must not be sentenced to life without parole for any crime short of homicide, California continues to impose sentences so extreme they are the effective equivalent of life without the possibility of parole.

Wayne Williams: Proposition 15 on the June ballot will change the way we finance election campaigns so politicians stay focused on the job we sent them to do! Prop 15 gets participating politicians out of the fund raising game and back to solving California’s problems.

Tom Hall: The corporate media is talking about the tragic coal mine “accident.” That’s a lot like saying that the junkie’s gun accidentally went off during the 7-11 robbery. Except that the junkie had an uncontrollable biological urge. And the junkie had not spent years thumbing his nose at the safety regulations and at the state and federal government agencies that tried to impose those regulations.

Tim Gatto: There’s one way to stop this coup on democracy, and that is for Congress to introduce a law specifying campaign limits and while they are at it, take corporate “personhood” and throw it in the trash bin where it belongs.

Wellness

Carole Bartolotto: The problem with concluding that GMOs are safe is that the argument for their safety rests solely on animal studies. These studies are offered as evidence that the debate over GMOs is over. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Environmentalism

Walker Foley: Elected officials seem to think there’s only one side of this property rights argument. The people who live in these communities have rights too, but the oil companies seem to have the jump on [the politicians’] side of the fence.